T-Mobile Unlimited 55+ Plan

I've used the T-Mobile plan for the last 3 trips to Europe and it works flawlessly. It's great to be able to connect cheaply (free, for texts) to folks back home.

I've been using T-Mobile overseas for over two years and have had zero problem. (The data promised outside North America is 2G but in some cases it's 4G.) I recently switched to the Unlimited 55 plan because it is a great deal. Unlimited everything in the U.S. as well as the international plan.

As soon as I arrive in a new country, my phone automatically connects to the local roaming partner and I get a welcome text from that country.

Kaeleku correctly states how things work.

On the T mobile plan - make sure you have roaming enabled on your phone.

When you get to a new country you will receive a welcome text from T mobile. That's the indicator that you are connected.

Data is slow (3G) but it works just fine. I was able to upload pictures to one of my blogs just fine.

If you have an iphone then enable the dial assist feature for phone calls. The phone detects your location and automatically adds the right prefix country code for calling back to the states.
Settings > Phone > Dial Assist
You would just dial the normal number and dial assist does the rest.

T mobile does have one gotcha which I agree with. You must have been a T mobile subscriber for at least as long as you will be overseas. This prevents people from signing up just for the international plan and then abandoning the plan after getting back. So if you want a month of international then you need to subscribe US at least one month prior.

T-Mobile is great if you can get a good deal being over 55 or part of a family plan or something. But some of us are under 55 and not part of a family plan, it's not particularly cheap. Nowadays the cheapest individual plan you can get is $75/month. With autopay that comes down to $70; maybe if you don't use much data you get a $10 rebate? $60/month is still way more than some of us want to pay for monthly mobile service.

If you need unlimited talk and text, you can get it from a variety of companies now for about $30/month - for example, MetroPCS (owned by T-Mobile) with 2GB of data per month. That's a savings of $360/year over T-Mobile. If you only go overseas once a year(?), that's a lot to pay just to have free international roaming on vacation. My Dutch Vodafone SIM cost $30 USD total including a month of data (3GB), and I'll use the SIM again next year. I already use Google Voice, so I get incoming calls on Google Hangouts to while I am overseas on my regular phone number.

Project FI might make a lot more sense if one didn't have to buy an expensive phone (one of only a few that are eligible) to use it. Not only do I not want to buy an expensive phone, I don't want one in my pocket I need to worry about losing or breaking.

Perhaps I'll need to be corrected on this, but I seem to recall something to the effect that one had to have service at least two months before they could use it for European calling. Seems that many people were switching to that plan just for trips to Europe and then dropping or changing the service when they got back. I could be wrong. Does anyone else remember something like that on the forum?

Andrew - it depends heavily on how you use the phone. Theoretically you could sign up for the T mobile unlimited and just drop all other providers. No need for cable with wifi. Drop into a Starbucks if you need high speed downloads.

There is no way I could exist on 2G of data.

T-Mobile is great for international use, and so is Project Fi (my personal choice). I know people who travel with T-Mobile and are quite happy with it.

Barring any special plans, Project Fi is good for those who tend to use data sparingly on a month-to-month basis, but has the disadvantage of being limited to certain phone models. I love it, though, and it was enough to motivate this long-time Apple user to switch to Android. Fi has worked for me well on recent travels to London, Wales, Scotland, Germany and Belgium, and within the United States, can harness three different networks. In addition to T-Mobile, it will use Sprint and US Cellular, which is particularly useful in remote rural areas. Since most of my use of the phone is inside the U.S., that's important to me. I've been on two recent local trips where my Fi phone worked and most others did not.

Both mobile services are worth investigating. Before Fi I used to buy a local SIM everywhere I went, but this way is easier.

TC:

Perhaps I'll need to be corrected on this, but I seem to recall something to the effect that one had to have service at least two months before they could use it for European calling. Seems that many people were switching to that plan just for trips to Europe and then dropping or changing the service when they got back. I could be wrong. Does anyone else remember something like that on the forum?

I don't think that's correct, TC - it wasn't true in May of 2016, when I signed up for T-Mobile for a month just so I could use it in Europe. (Back when it was still only $50/month and you could get a free SIM. Now it's $20+ just for the SIM.) I used it in Europe less than a month after I initiated service. It did work well - as I said, for me personally, the issue with T-Mobile is the cost of service the rest of the year at home in the US.

Cindy:

Andrew - it depends heavily on how you use the phone. Theoretically you could sign up for the T mobile unlimited and just drop all other providers. No need for cable with wifi. Drop into a Starbucks if you need high speed downloads.
There is no way I could exist on 2G of data.

Without going into great detail, I run a server at home, so I need wired service. My cell phone is my only phone service, but I guess I just don't use it that much. I have been using about 500MB a month of data for the last year or so. I don't think I've ever gotten close to using 2GB a month. But sure if I had no other internet service at home, I'd probably use quite a bit more data and it would make more sense.

There was this post from earlier this year that indicated T Mobile required signing up early.

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/tech-tips/t-mobile-requires-advance-time-beware

We all have different needs so our particular situations will require different approaches. I have limited need for cellular data when I’m not traveling, so for me I go the local SIM card route and use a fairly cheap prepaid plan domestically. I’m overseass only once or twice a year so even factoring in the time spent getting the card I’m way ahead dollar wise.

Rocket, that report quoted people in a T-Mobile store who, in my opinion, can be completely clueless about international use of the phone. (Although you'd think they would be eager enough to sell you a plan that they wouldn't care.) As I said above, I did this exact thing just over a year ago and I had no trouble using my phone in Europe. Could T-Mobile have changed their policy just within the last year? I suppose it's possible - personally, I doubt it.

I'd probably sign up for the T-Mobile plan, then before leaving the US call T-Mobile to verify that you can use it overseas. If they insist that you have to use it in the US for a while first - cancel your plan for a full refund (you have 14 days to do that last I checked). That seems like it would be a more accurate way to know than relying on the sales droids at a T-Mobile store.

For question #3 - I haven't tried what Kaeluku suggests.

I have T Mobile and a U.S. phone number. When I am calling a European number, I always dial the plus sign followed by the country code and phone number (dropping the leading zero). For example, if in the UK and the local number is 020 7123 4567, I would dial +44 20 7123 4567 from my phone.

Just wanted to add that we just returned from a trip to France and Italy with T-mobile on two iPhones. Worked fine with "dial assist" turned on, you just called like normal and the phone figures out the prefixes. If you see a number on a sign in Europe you need to call, just type it is as-is, and it will work.

Don't be surprised if the data is significantly slower than you're used to, however. We used T-mobile in Europe in 2015, and had very high speed data... but that's because T-mobile was running a "high speed in Europe" promo that is now over. On our recent trip (2 weeks ago), data speeds were absolutely capped at 128 kbps. Which is VERY slow. Don't expect social media apps to work well, or at all. Maps barely load, if at all (use Google Maps to pre-download areas, it helps a lot). And the poor speeds are compounded when you have marginal service. We still sought out Wi-Fi whenever possible.

One tip: use the "Opera Mini" browser, which you can get on the iOS or Google Play app stores. It can cut down data usage by up to 90% for loading webpages (but only web - it does nothing for apps), which makes a significant difference, although it breaks a lot of formatting on webpages and makes them "look ugly" - still good for pulling up a Wikipedia article about something you see quickly on such a slow connection.

rbmichae:

Don't be surprised if the data is significantly slower than you're used to, however. We used T-mobile in Europe in 2015, and had very high speed data... but that's because T-mobile was running a "high speed in Europe" promo that is now over. On our recent trip (2 weeks ago), data speeds were absolutely capped at 128 kbps. Which is VERY slow. Don't expect social media apps to work well, or at all. Maps barely load, if at all (use Google Maps to pre-download areas, it helps a lot). And the poor speeds are compounded when you have marginal service. We still sought out Wi-Fi whenever possible.

Do you recall what types of networks your phone was connecting to? 4GLTE? 3G? 2G? That makes a big difference in speed.

With T-Mobile, your phone will always connect to the fastest network it can find (with a roaming partner, anyway). But T-Mobile still throttles your speed to slow it down. When I used T-Mobile last May-June in the Baltics, St. Petersburg, and Amsterdam, I connected mostly to 4G networks. I rarely noticed a slowdown...EXCEPT when I used a lot of data at once, say to stream a short video - then it would slow to a crawl for a few minutes. The rest of the time it seem zippy and fast. (After I came back, T-Mobile had their "summer of fast data promo" where they lifted the data throttling for the summer - but that didn't happen until after I got home.)

If your phone only connects to a 2G "edge" network, data will be impossibly slow whether they slow it down or not. Some phones may not have the right frequencies to connect faster than 2G in Europe, even if they are 4G phones in the US. (And some European countries use different frequencies than others.) I had a phone in Europe in 2015 that didn't have 3G or 4G European frequencies, so I could connect only at 2G, and it was challenging to use most of the time. That's wht makes a big difference in speed.

With T-Mobile, your phone will always connect to the fastest network it can find (with a roaming partner, anyway). But T-Mobile still throttles your speed to slow it down. When I used T-Mobile last May-June in the Baltics, St. Petersburg, and Amsterdam, I connected mostly to 4G networks. I rarely noticed a slowdown...EXCEPT when I used a lot of data at once, say to stream a short video - then it would slow to a crawl foy I upgraded my phone for 2016, and it worked so much better with T-Mobile (but this year, I dumped them anyway and bought the Vodafone SIM).

On our recent trip (2 weeks ago), data speeds were absolutely capped
at 128 kbps.

Not, my experience. I was in Germany and Denmark back in August, and my Tmobile speeds were considerably faster than 128kbps. Same deal when I visited Japan and Hong Kong in February.
With an Iphone at least, one can go into the "Carrier" settings screen, switch off the "Automatic" setting, and manually switch to another carrier which often speeds things up if one carrier is slow for a variety of reasons.

128Kbps sounds like the phone is connected to a 2G/Edge network.

If you have an iphone then enable the dial assist feature for phone calls. The phone detects your location and automatically adds the right prefix country code for calling back to the states.

This confuses me. The "right prefix code" to call back to the states on a cellphone is +1, followed by the area code and number. The + is a universal shortcut for the international access code no matter where you are.

What I have to figure out every time I travel to Europe is how to amend the listed numbers for dialing from within that country; for example if a number in Dublin is listed as +353 1 402 9988...